Basic Indonesian: An Introductory Coursebook

by Stuart O. Robson, Yacinta Kurniasih

Basic Indonesian is designed to provide rapid mastery of modern Indonesian, which is spoken by more than 240 million people.

Divided into 28 graded lessons, the book provides fill-in-the-blank exercises, quizzes, word puzzles and question-and-answer practices to reinforce the learning. Extensive cultural notes are provided along with detailed tips on etiquette and appropriate cultural behavior in the world's largest Islamic society.

288 pages, Paperback

First published October 10, 2010

About the author

An Australian scholar, Stuart Robson has been involved with Asian Studies for over 40 years. A resident of Victoria, Australia, he has lived and taught overseas, and has a number of publications to his name. He currently teaches Indonesian at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. He is a member of the Royal Institute of Linguistics and Anthropology. His other interests include Theravada Buddhism, archaeology, and classical Javanese music.

Reviews

[N. N. Santiago · Rating 3 out of 5]

For a total novice (as I am), when read cover to cover without concentrating too much on the exercises or vocab, this book is not bad for an introductory overview of the language. As something to work through though, for me, it dedicates too much time on the connotations of affixes and suffixes. While I can see an analysis of them is necessary to a certain extent, for example in order to be able to isolate a verbal root when conjugating into the passive (don't believe anyone when they tell you Bahasa Indonesia has no conjugations!), there is far too much focus on the changes in meaning caused by the various affixes and suffixes.

The authors write that "the purpose of the discussion is to help identifying the meaning of a given verb and getting an accurate feeling for its place in relation to the other words in a sentence...we are not inviting anybody to make up forms for themselves!" If this is the case, then why not just quickly cover the mechanisms of the aff-/suffixes and their general connotations, and leave the student to appreciate the nitty-gritty of their semantic modification to a more advanced stage? With the space saved, they could have covered much more in terms of sentence construction, grammar, and words more useful to a beginner than learning that -an when suffixed to kudis (scabies) creates kudisan, meaning 'suffering from scabies, mangy'. (!)

While there is a lot to get stuck in to here, I would also say this is not the best book for self-study. A large part of the book is taken up by exercises which have no corresponding answer section. Are they in a teacher's edition?

[Florian · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book definitely isn't what it claims to be. If you are picking this up as a beginner you will likely leave confused and frustrated. All the questions and explanations in the exercises are only given in Indonesian, leaving you constantly referring to your dictionary. The listening comprehension uses lots of vocab that wasn't introduced before.

But for me, coming with some previous language exposure, this was a good book. I really liked the stories about the experiences of an exchange student in Indonesia, the audio recording is very understandable. I didn't go through all the grammar explanations in detail but even those seemed well done and useful as a reference.

I think the publishers could have saved themselves a lot of bad reviews by not branding this as basic and introductory.

[Roger Cobcroft · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is not a good book for learning a language. The dialogues in each chapter do not build on each other - after the first few dialogues they become a dreary process of hunting through a dictionary to translate the text. This is because the vocab list provided with the dialogue is incomplete.
Then there is the grammar section in each chapter. Long list of grammar rules to follow, and hard to memorise.
The idea of an Audio CD is dated. Why not an app to download so that you can listed to dialogues on your phone.
Dont waste your money on this,

[Misa]

This book is not helpful if you're an absolute beginner. I might get back to it for more of my readings when I acquire more vocabulary and understanding of the Indonesian language.

[Ayu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Includes interesting history of language and insightful grammatical/cultural notes for those already familiar with the language, but not a book for complete beginners. Further, some sentences can be awkward. It's almost as if they were directly translated from English instead of something a native speaker would come up with.

[Amanda Rose · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unfortunately so far I cannot recommend this book. The lessons are decent enough but what connection is there between the lessons and the audio (which is rather poor quality)? None that I can see, I keep feeling I am missing something so perhaps it will all suddenly become clear and I'll have to come back here and apologise....

[Paul, · Rating 3 out of 5]

The kindle version of this book is annoying because too many of the pages are just images instead of text, which means they are very small and hard to read. However, the content is pretty good, if the grammar is a bit scattered.